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“No, not the milk. Jeez, your mind is in the gutter. Or the pasture. Like out on the farm. I’ll have you know we haven’t even had sex since the blessed event.” Sage sailed out with baby in tow past Ally, who was shaking her head and trying not to laugh.
Rylee glanced back at me. “Your friends are kind of weird.”
I grinned. My friends. I truly had friends now, ones I hadn’t made just because of proximity or work events. They were like my sisters, quirks and all. “I know, and I love them.”
“Hey, hey, hey,” Ally said. “Though we love you too. Now get a move on before Dare pulls off his bowtie and chucks it into the lake.”
“Aww, he’s wearing a bowtie? How sweet is that? He must be dying.” I blinked at Sage, hoping that I really hadn’t just seen as much of her ample cleavage as I was pretty sure I had. “Speaking of dying, it’s cold out here. Too cold for exposed…bosoms.”
“No kidding.” Sage flipped the bodice of her dress into place and tucked her now slumbering baby back against her chest like an old pro. “Tap’s off for now, babycakes. Mama needs to protect the supply.”
I touched my own barely-there belly. Would I be so natural with my child after giving birth? So ready to expose my breasts and feed him at a moment’s notice, no matter where we were?
A few months ago, I would’ve said no. Now? Who the heck knew what I’d do or who I was becoming?
It would be fun finding out.
The soft strains of the traditional wedding march drifted over to us and I gasped, reaching out for Sage on one side and my sister on the other. “Do you hear that?”
“Yes, seeing as we’re right across the street.”
Rylee’s dry tone and Sage’s giggle barely dented my consciousness. “That’s my wedding march. For me. Traditional all the way this time.” Well, minus the pizza joint reception after, but even that suited us right down to the ground.
Dare’s parents’ pizza place was now a family business. Family. I had one that I’d made, not just been given.
“Minus the bun in the oven. Though gotta say, in Crescent Cove, it pretty much is becoming traditional to get married while knocked up.” Ally grinned at my sister. “Better get out of town while you can.”
“I don’t live here.” Rylee sniffed. “I live in Turnbull.”
“Ah, yes, but have you had sex in Crescent Cove?” Sage pointed at my sister and nodded, well, sagely as Rylee visibly flushed. “That is the true test. Beware, little sister.”
“You didn’t get knocked up in Crescent Cove,” Ally reminded her. “Hello, Vegas.”
“Yes, but it was with a homegrown Crescent Cove penis. Same difference.”
“Homegrown?” I frowned. “Are you implying there’s a better success rate for local dicks? Because Dare isn’t from Crescent Cove and he inseminated me just fine.”
“Yoohoo, hello, ladies, wedding happening over here,” Seth called across the street. “You planning on joining us anytime soon?”
“We were waiting for traffic,” Ally called back, making a show of looking up and down the street. Her gaze stopped on the line of cars waiting for us to cross at the crosswalk.
Whoops.
My sister grabbed my arm and we hauled ass. The snow was still swirling and between that and the blur of my tears as I stared at the brightly lit gazebo, I couldn’t see much clearly. The Christmas tree in the gazebo shone with a rainbow of colors, and thick red velvet bows hung from the eaves, their long tails blowing in the breeze. But as beautiful as the scene was before me, that wasn’t why I was nearly blind from crying.
It was because there was a handsome man waiting for me on that gazebo, holding his little boy in his arms. A little boy who was waving to me as if he couldn’t wait for me to join them.
Just like a regular mom with a regular family.
I waved back and hurried up the walkway, belatedly forgetting that Ally and Sage were supposed to go first. And where were my flowers? Rylee was supposed to be holding them for me, but unless she’d stashed them in the bodice of her dress, they were MIA.
So much for traditional. I was just going to have to wing it.
“Ahem,” Ally said pointedly, raising her brows as she and Sage moved ahead of me up the walkway.
I waited for Rylee to do the same, since she was now part of the wedding party, an oversight I was making up for from my first wedding. Truthfully, I hadn’t thought she would be interested. We were close, but maybe not close enough, and she wasn’t exactly responsible, though I’d figured she could hang on to my flowers since she worked for a freaking florist.
But not only did she not remember to produce my flowers, she’d clearly also forgotten how to walk.
